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peer-reviewed, This study shows how interest group-party relations, parties cross-cutting policy preferences, and competition with challenger parties shape the structure of issue competition on climate policy. It uses the  most similar cases of the UK and Ireland to show how differences in party systems influence the structure of issue competition. Theoretically, the study takes up the challenge of integrating salience and position in the conceptualisation of climate policy preferences. Empirically, it provides new evidence on factors influencing climate policy preferences and the party politics of climate change, focusing on interest groups, party ideology, and challenger parties. Further, it identifies similarities between the general literature on interest group influence on party preferences and the literature on interest groups in climate politics, and seeks to make connections between them., ACCEPTED, peer-reviewed

peer-reviewed, The ‘two worlds of morality politics’ framework suggests that the historical structure of the party system has a major influence on the politics of morality issues. This study uses the case of Ireland to examine that proposition. Ireland is unusual in that it combines the absence of an historical church-state conflict in its party system with an historically strong Roman Catholic Church. It is therefore a ‘critical case’ for the ‘two worlds’ framework, which brings to the fore the interaction of the Church and the party system. It is also a puzzling case in the timing and sequence of its reforms. Focusing on the politics of contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, and divorce, we show that the Church had no strong secularising opponents (‘enemies’); however, when public attitudes changed and when liberalising interest groups mobilised, nor did the Church have parties who were close allies (‘friends’). Case studies of abortion and same-sex marriage show in greater depth how, in the presence of changing attitudes and mobilisation, the Church lacked a foothold in the party system that would allow it to obstruct reforms. The study’s findings open a conversation between the heretofore separate literatures on morality politics and Church influence., peer-reviewed

peer-reviewed, Political parties are important actors in domestic climate politics. What drives variation in parties’ climate policy preferences? To contribute to a growing literature on the party politics of climate change, we focus on the roles of public opinion, party competition, and parties’ traditional policy preferences in shaping parties’ climate policy preferences in Denmark and Ireland. In case studies that draw on in-depth interviews with policy practitioners, we show how parties respond to public opinion, accommodate issue-owners, and are powerfully constrained and enabled by their existing preferences. These mechanisms also help to explain different responses on climate policy across the left-right spectrum. Competition between mainstream parties is particularly powerful, but can constrain as much as it enables ‘greener’ climate policy preferences. While climate change may be a distinctive problem, the party politics of climate change features similar incentives and constraints as other domains., peer-reviewed

peer-reviewed, This chapter examines the crucial role that political parties play in maintaining a unified voting bloc in parliament. This party-based approach sets it apart from most existing studies in this area. The focus of this chapter is on the factors that incentivize MPs to vote in a unified manner. The chapter tests three hypotheses: (1) whether party unity is improved by greater party organizational strength; (2) whether the greater threat of disciplinary sanctions increases party unity; and (3) whether greater access to resources by MPs reduces party unity. The authors use the Political Party Database (PPDB) dataset to test these hypotheses in thirteen of Europe’s democracies, finding strong support for the third hypothesis, some support for the first hypothesis, but little support for the second hypothesis. This study adds an important new dimension to research on how institutions affect party unity by showing the distinct role party organizations can play in this regard., peer reviewed

peer-reviewed, This study presents an innovative approach to hand-coding parties’ policy preferences in the relatively new, crosssectoral field of climate change mitigation policy. It applies this approach to party manifestos in six countries, comparing the preferences of parties in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom over the past two decades. It probes the data for evidence of validity through content validation and convergent/discriminant validation and engages with the debate on position-taking in environmental policy by developing a positional measure that incorporates ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ climate policy preferences. The analysis provides evidence for the validity of the new measures, shows that they are distinct from comparable measures of environmental policy preferences and argues that they are more comprehensive than existing climate policy measures. The new measures strengthen the basis for answering questions that are central to climate politics and to party politics. The approach developed here has important implications for the study of new, complex or cross-cutting policy issues and issues that include both valence and positional aspects., PUBLISHED, peer-reviewed

The domestic arena has never been so important for the politics of climate change. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change established a global framework that emphasises ‘nationally determined’ responses to climate change. This places national policies – and the political and institutional factors that help or hinder those responses – front and centre. In the comparative study of climate politics, Ireland is not just another understudied case. It is in many respects an interesting case, both for its peculiarities and for what it shares with other countries: its sets of opportunities and challenges; its successes and failures; and the circumstances in which policy-makers have operated. This symposium addresses some rapidly developing areas in the study of comparative climate politics. In doing so, it contributes to developing knowledge of the features that make the Irish case interesting; that make it similar to and potentially representative of other classes of cases; and that make it different from other cases and in some respects unique. Overall, the symposium highlights significant constraints on effective policy responses to climate change in Ireland.

This study contributes to the growing literature on the domestic politics of climate change by examining the climate policy preferences of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party over 20 years. Bringing the concept of ‘policy entrepreneurship’ into the study of intra-party politics, it uses secondary data, party documents, publicly-available information and a series of in-depth interviews to develop an understanding of intra-party policy entrepreneurship and political parties’ climate policy preferences. It finds that office-seeking incentives have tended to trump the activities of individuals who have engaged in policy entrepreneurship with the aim of strengthening their parties’ climate policy preferences. In instances where office-seeking incentives for climate policy have been strong, they have often contributed to changes in policy preferences, whether or not intra-party policy entrepreneurship has been present. Theoretically, the study argues that the concept of ‘policy entrepreneurship’ can be usefully borrowed from the public policy literature by researchers of party policy preferences and intra-party politics. Empirically, it adds to the small but growing body of research on climate politics in Ireland.

The general election that followed the ‘earthquake’ of 25 February 2011 (Gallagher and Marsh 2011; Hutcheson 2011; Little 2011) was always going to be an important staging post on the journey from the Fianna Fáil party’s predominance towards some new dispensation. That election took place five years and one day later. It delivered the most fragmented Dáil (lower house of parliament) ever and was followed by Ireland’s longest government formation process. Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny succeeded in becoming the first leader of his party since the 1920s to retain the office of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) after a general election. He achieved this by negotiating a minority coalition with several non-party (‘Independent’) TDs (MPs) and a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with Fianna Fáil. However, the durability of these arrangements is in doubt.